


The Kind That's Not Undone

by luninosity



Series: Like Sugar (Spell It Out) [8]
Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Comfort Sex, Consensual Kink, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Hand Jobs, Hot Chocolate, Leashes, Love, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Nightmares, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 01:42:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6495817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian finally has that nightmare again, now that he's got so much to lose. Chris tries to help him feel safe and loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Euruaina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euruaina/gifts).



> **Some warnings for:** nightmares, threatened (in the nightmare) blackmail of Sebastian for money or sex, explicit sexual content.
> 
> Title this time from Tegan & Sara's "Love They Say."

_Sebastian_  
  
He has the nightmare again.  
  
He’s not faced it since before the wedding. Since before the signing of the contract, even: he tries to recall, standing in the dream, and can’t. Months. Several. He’d been surprised in a distracted way at the time; he doesn’t have it often, but he’d’ve guessed it might’ve come the night Chris Evans had officially bought him.  
  
He puts out a hand, in the dream, and touches the nearest curving wall. Blank and white and smooth as an eggshell, the wall offers no help to his fingertips. Light fills the tiny room, emanating from no visible source. Three doors wait in front of him; identical and featureless, they gaze back, expecting him to choose.  
  
The starting room’s not always the same—his imagination’s impressive, and sometimes opera’s playing and sometimes he’s backstage at a Shakespearean theatre with groundling dust in his hair—but the doors are.  
  
He knows those doors.  
  
He knows he’s asleep, in non-dream life. He knows he’s lying in bed, cuddled in his husband’s arms, kept snug and close. They’re home in the apartment they’ve picked out and decorated together. In the life they’re building together.  
  
He knows, with the clear-eyed rationality of dreams, that this is why now.  
  
His wedding ring glints gold and simple and true on his left ring finger. He’s wearing Chris’s pajama pants and loose long-sleeved blue shirt: the clothes his Dominant had given him earlier. What he’s been told to wear.  
  
But he doesn’t mind that. He likes that, in fact; and he laughs, though the sound’s small and broken by oppressive silence.  
  
He’s Chris’s. He belongs to Chris. He chooses to belong to Chris, and if he’s dressed in what Chris gives him, that’s because he wholeheartedly entered into that contract.  
  
The world’s not as simple as that. The contract’s not as simple as that. He knows.  
  
He touches the wall again, the featureless white curve beside the first door. Three options. A fairytale: three tasks, three witches, three nights, three knights. Triads and triumvirates.  
  
Threes. Himself. Chris. The person Chris had loved first and had lost. Irrevocably so, that great divide of a casket and a world in mourning. But Chris Evans has fallen in love again, has said the words, has given Sebastian that big generous golden heart to hold and protect. Sebastian will keep him safe.  
  
Chris had punished him, earlier. Justified. Agreed-upon. Necessary. It’d felt—not good, of course not, being corrected. But right. The way the world, his world, should be. Chris will care for him; he submits himself to his Dominant, and that includes rules and scoldings and rewards. He’s never done this before, but he thinks he likes it, this belonging. When it’s Chris.  
  
He smiles at his wedding ring. It beams back, happy on his finger. But it’s never been here for one of these dreams. It doesn’t know.  
  
He does. He knows this dream. Details might differ—never a hundred percent the same—but the end’s inevitable. He can delay it, he can run, but he can’t escape. He closes his eyes, opens them.   
  
Of course it’s now. When he’s happy. When he’s got so much to lose.  
  
The walls, with pointed eerie noiseless grace, start closing in. The room gets smaller. If he stays here he’ll die. Crushed.  
  
He’ll wake screaming—he will wake, though. He’s not really going to die.  
  
He’s never been in love before. He’s never let himself love before, not like this: this fierce wildfire that burns without scorching, that illuminates without pain. He’s never wanted so badly to step into the flame.  
  
He’ll give Chris everything. All of himself. His best.  
  
He’s never been so afraid that his best won’t be enough. He’s never been so exhilarated and thrilled and hopeful that it might be.  
  
Chris knows about this nightmare—or rather knows that nightmares exist. Sebastian’s mentioned the fact of his, no detail, in passing. Chris must remember. Even if not, Chris is aware of the general concept of nightmares. Chris surely knows that they happen to people, at least in the abstract. His Dominant cannot fault him for this. For being…  
  
…less than his best.   
  
Not good enough.  
  
Not enough.  
  
When Chris deserves so much more.  
  
Hot tears scald his eyes, suddenly; in a fit of anger at himself, he jerks open the first door, knowing what he’ll face, needing to face something.  
  
From the void, the nightmare smiles at him with no face: black uniform, glinting silver accents, blank smoothness where eyes and nose and mouth should be, horribly familiar.   
  
Sebastian says politely, “No thank you—” and slams the door shut on it, heart pounding.  
  
He turns his back on that door. He does not cry, though his chest is heaving and his stomach twists.   
  
He opens the second door instead. The instant he does, the shrinking eggshell room vanishes.   
  
He’s outside, in the backyard of his stepfather’s cheerfully time-scuffed colonial home in upstate New York. He knows the changing colors of those trees, the scent of woodsmoke, the grey-brown of the low charming fence. He’d more or less grown up in this house: already twelve years old upon arrival, in and out for school and music lessons and after six short years off to college, Rutgers acceptance letters and a year of study abroad, pouring himself into the joy of music and folklore in London…  
  
He doesn’t test the back door; he doesn’t want to know whether this dreamed-up recreation will have changed the locks. Whether the nightmare’s taken away the telescope in his room and the books on outer space that his stepfather’d bought him for his thirteenth birthday, the first birthday he’d celebrated in this home, the first of so many chocolate cakes and a growing shared library.  
  
He wanders down the well-trodden garden path, not glancing back.   
  
He’s unsurprised, in the manner of dreams, to discover Scott Evans holding an earnest conversation with an award-winning crimson-budded rosebush, which nods along sagely with each comment. Scott’s wearing a thick black unmistakable submissive’s collar and not much else; the not-much appears to be composed mainly of colorful feathers.   
  
“Don’t let Dad see you dressed like that,” Sebastian suggests, leaning over the gate, “or he’ll decide you’re a bird and chase you off.” His stepfather’d been very proud of the gardens, and very annoyed at avian incursions, once. Before the silences, and the confusion, and the brutal gaps where memory’d been.   
  
“I always dress like this,” Scott says, turning his way, “haven’t you noticed? How’s the opera?”  
  
“Not yet started,” Sebastian says companionably, and watches the roses with him for a moment. “I have time.”  
  
“Do you?” Scott looks at him with disconcerting intensity for a dream-person. The intensity’s unhampered by the violently violet feather boa. “He needs you.”  
  
Sebastian has to laugh. “Chris? I need him. He doesn’t. Not me. Not the same way.”  
  
“No,” Scott says with newfound urgency, “he needs you, right now,” and then turns into a violet-striped kangaroo and hops away, right over the fence, accompanied by the playful rosebush.  
  
“Well,” Sebastian says, nonplussed, watching them go, “all right,” and he props a shoulder on the gate and thinks of Chris. The way sea-floor eyes go wide and worried over the welfare of loved ones. The way Chris Evans will pull his heart out and wear it on his sleeve, open and beautiful and easily bruised. Chris has loved and has lost; if Chris somehow needs _Sebastian_ , Sebastian will be at his side forever, proudly so.  
  
When he turns toward his stepfather’s house the nightmare’s waiting.  
  
It stretches out spindly arms. It holds a clipboard and a pen. “Sebastian Stan,” it says. “No, sorry, there’s been a mistake, you were a mistake, you need to come with us—”  
  
The skinny door in the air opens beside its right shoulder. Sebastian dives past and into the gap. Skeletal fingers scrape his arm, his wrist. The wrist goes numb with cold. But the door closes.  
  
Rubbing the frostbitten spot, he glances around the colorless circular space. That first room, the waiting room. One more door.  
  
He needs you, Scott’d said. Chris.  
  
And Sebastian, aware that he’s dreaming, aware that in reality he’s naked in his husband’s arms, safely chastised and made love to and forgiven and loved, says to the empty room, “I love him,” and opens that door.  
  
He’s in a street this time. He knows this street. Rubble and flags and far-off shouts. Revolutionary rumblings and spray-painted graffiti bannering walls. Explosions not yet erupted, but imminent. Kettles simmering near a boil. Hisses in the air.  
  
Constanţa. Romania. Childhood. Grey skies and Communism. When he takes a step down the alley, gritty dust crackles underfoot.  
  
He’s the age he is now, not a child; he’s mildly startled to realize as much, taller when he finds familiar landmarks and cracked windows. He makes his way around two corners and into a jumble of market-shops and discovers his old apartment building, assuredly never in this part of town, looming rather astonishedly above shorter squatter less celebrated flats.  
  
He opens that door too—the doorman nods at him—and goes up the stairs.  
  
They’d always been more well-off than some. Arts and artists had a certain prestige, a certain respect: performing ponies to demonstrate culture to the world. His mother’d been one of the best pianists anyplace; if some officials’d looked askance at her disappeared husband and small shy son, they’d paid more attention to her talent.   
  
The carpet’s old but good quality, blood-red and rich. The walls are grey and imperial. The hallway’s long, though not as long as he recalls. He doesn’t get to touch the doorknob; the scene changes and he’s inside the apartment, the scents of pumpkin goulash and wood-polish and warmth instantly smacking him over the head with homesickness.  
  
He hesitates—find his bedroom? find his mother? try to leave and find Chris?—and starts finally toward the kitchen, the beating heart of this home, the vibrant countertops and flavors he remembers. His mother, coming in from behind him, says in Romanian, “Oh, this is for you, darling,” and drops her flowered scarf on the coat-rack—she’s younger, much younger, long wavy dark hair and the unlined smile he mostly knows from faded photographs—and hands him a small model kit: an American space shuttle in a box, assembly required.  
  
“The American ambassador’s wife has a son about your age,” she explains. “He likes them, and she thought you might too. I’m sorry it’s open, sweetheart. Inspections.”  
  
He knows from memory that all the stickers—the American flag, the NASA logo—will be missing. He knows also that he does not care: it’s a space shuttle, and it can fly to the moon.   
  
“It goes to other worlds, perhaps,” she says, “you’ll have to tell me about them,” and pats him on the shoulder and goes off to the kitchen, humming Tchaikovsky.   
  
He regards the open box. It gapes invitingly back at him. Home.  
  
The cold spot on his wrist, nightmare-touched, throbs. It’s blackening, darkening over his skin.  
  
When he glances down the hall, he sees himself.   
  
His younger smaller self, to be precise: eight years old, or maybe not quite, huge-eyed and reticent and full of dreams. That him is staring at this him from around the bedroom doorway, mouth agape.  
  
“Hi,” Sebastian offers, holding out the box. “I think this is for you.” His arm’s dressed in an astronaut’s space-suit; all of him is, he realizes, minus the helmet. “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” he says to the dream, “I’m scared of flying, honestly,” and the outfit turns itself into a Han-Solo styled vest and shirt and Corellian blood-stripe set of trousers. “Thank you.”  
  
Younger him runs out of the bedroom and down the hall, brushing up against his leg and plucking the model box from his hand, and then pauses, attention caught by voices from the kitchen. He sits down to eavesdrop; Sebastian, following along, does the same.  
  
“—you should go now,” one voice is saying. Not his mother; her best friend, a petite ballerina with thin nervous features and fairylike grace. “If you have the chance, take it. You cannot pack; you cannot take anything, only accept the concert invitation. Vienna. Away from here. Think of—”  
  
“Don’t.” That’s his mother. Quick and sharp. “Don’t say it, don’t even think it—they have ears everywhere, and long arms—”  
  
His heart crashes into his ribs under the space-hero costume. Long arms and sharp teeth and big ears. Monsters, those secret police.   
  
Younger him is looking up, afraid, as more words happen; Sebastian knows he’ll have the nightmare that night, and many nights to come. Faceless uniformed bodies, distorted limbs and bat’s hearing, taking his mother away or taking him away or both. He will not tell her the details of the dream, even as she comforts him. He will let her believe the dreams stop, after a time.  
  
It’ll be all right, he wants to say. You will be safe, you will be well, you will be loved. Both of you: her and you, someday. You’ll find a happy ending, and an artist with kind hands who’ll smile at you like you’re the sun in his sky.  
  
He was not present in the memory; he can’t get the words to take shape in his mouth. He closes his eyes as his heart breaks.  
  
Chris needs him. This isn’t where he’s meant to be.  
  
He’s meant to be _with_ Chris. A happy ending.  
  
The door to their apartment opens behind him.   
  
Shadows stretch out claws along the wall: elongated beyond human bearing.  
  
Young Sebastian’s disappeared; present-day Sebastian panics and runs for his childhood bedroom. His footfalls make no sound, swallowed up by greedy black.  
  
His bedroom’s not large and there’s nowhere to go. He backs up against the bed. Hand-painted blue walls tighten around him. He can’t breathe.  
  
The door swings wide enough to admit one person; his mother, he thinks at first, a flicker of flowered scarf, but then the scarf shifts into that uniform and the face flattens into flesh-toned indecipherable smoothness and the legs swing in a disjointed insectile way with the next step—  
  
“You shouldn’t run,” the policeman-creature says pleasantly. It can speak with no mouth. It always has. “You’ll only make this worse.”  
  
“You’re not real,” Sebastian tells it, fingers digging into the mattress behind him. “You’re not real, I made you up, I overheard, I imagined—”  
  
“Oh, we’re very real.” Almost offended, fastidious, sniffing at him. “Long ears and long arms and claws in everyone, they say. And you know it.”  
  
“Not now, then,” Sebastian pleads, protests, bargains. “Not now. He needs me.”  
  
“You don’t get to choose when. You escaped us once. But, you see, you lied. You knew what you were. You and your mother ran from us, and you lied about yourself—so much paperwork, no wonder no one caught it, so clever of you. But we were always going to find you and bring you home.”  
  
“I didn’t mean—” It had been half a mistake and half deliberately uncorrected. He’d been too young for the mandatory testing in Romania when they’d gotten out. Austria had much more lenient laws; he’d’ve had until his sixteenth birthday—he could’ve gone in sooner, of course, if he’d chosen to—to be categorized, though that hadn’t been the case in the end. He’d learned to lie, instead.  
  
He’d known about himself and being submissive from very early on, earlier than most of the children his age, precocious and a voracious devourer of books. He’d been afraid, reading old histories and new newspaper articles: submissives treated as gilded decoration, birds with clipped wings, kept in cages and used for prestige or pleasure. He’d known the desires that stirred in the pit of his stomach, and the dark throb between his legs when looking at a certain volume of crude stories behind the classrooms at school.  
  
In New York the emigration officials’d assumed he’d already been tested, given that American children did preliminary sorting at the age of eleven, and that the paperwork’d been lost in the shuffle. He’d let them go on thinking so, and had shaken his head when a harried woman in official clothing asked whether he’d ever been identified as Dominant or submissive. True, after all. He never had been.   
  
And she’d written down _baseline, unremarkable, no special restrictions_ , and let him go home with his stepfather, to that house with marvelous books and rose-gardens outside.   
  
“Did you think you could stay?” The faceless man holds out the clipboard his direction. “You always knew it’d been a lie. Silly little submissive. Hiding who you are, hiding in America, hiding in your career. You could never have been good enough. Not for someone like him.”  
  
“I am,” Sebastian whispers. “I am, I’m his, he said—”  
  
“No. You know that isn’t true.” A check on the clipboard, in a box: “And now I’m afraid you really must go. Lying to the State is a crime.”  
  
He’d knelt, he’d been good, he’d flown under Chris’s hands. Chris had held him. “He loves me.”  
  
“That’s no reason we should let you stay. He still had to punish you, you see. Even in that you’re failing. America doesn’t want you and he doesn’t want you. Now come along quietly.”  
  
He needs you, Scott’s voice echoes. “I won’t leave him alone.”  
  
“What makes you think, little boy,” the faceless man asks, light glinting off the metal on that uniform, off the top of the clipboard, off fingernails that shine like bits of silver, “that you can do anything for him?” A nod, and other hands grip his arms, his shoulders. The hands come out of his bedroom walls, forming wiry forests that cling and snatch. Sebastian struggles, jerks one arm away, is caught.  
  
“What makes you think you have a choice?”  
  
“Please don’t do this—”  
  
“Of course it was all a mistake, you see,” the blank face tells him with inexorable kindness, “you having this life.”  
  
“No,” Sebastian retorts, “it _wasn’t_ —” and yanks his arms free and runs. He knows the shadows’ll be right behind him.  
  
He bursts out his bedroom door onto unexpected steps, trips—badly, and his ankle twists, and he falls, pain too abrupt for even a gasp. He lands in a heap on hard-packed dirt ground under brittle sunshine. The clawed arms haven’t yet caught up. It’s a matter of time.   
  
He looks around. Slate-slab sky, scattered leaf-heaps like rattling bones, dry dirt underfoot. A castle in the middle distance: not the fairytale spires of a Disney film, but a small nineteenth-century manor-house style, New England wealth crossed with a Jane Austen novel and a miniature moat. Scrapes on his palms where he’d tried to break his fall. Pain.   
  
He flexes his ankle, testing. Not broken. Movable. But swelling even as he tries. Throbbing like hell. He’s wearing jeans now, he notices, because dream-him has evidently taken time to change. Plus black boots. And the sweater he’d had on that morning.  
  
Sitting on the tree-lined dirt lane, wind ruffling his hair, he considers his options.   
  
He only has one, really. Chris—  
  
And the instant he thinks that name, he knows with absolute dream-certainty that Chris is in fact in that castle under that bare-boned sky.  
  
He wishes he had a scarf and a branch to lean on. He’s not sure he trusts his ankle without assistance. He’s sure it doesn’t matter: he’s going to get up and he’s going to find Chris.  
  
As he thinks this a branch plops down from the tree across the road, evidently knocked by wind. A few seconds later a long stripe of blue flutters lazily over and lands beside it, lounging innocently in the dirt lane. It’s one of his scarves, from his closet at home.  
  
“Thank you,” he says to whatever fairytale author’s listening, and he manages to wrap his ankle tightly enough to at least minimize the hurt, and he gets upright with the aid of the stick and balances with it, breathless. “Okay,” he says to it, “let’s see how this goes, then, shall we,” and limps carefully toward the lowered drawbridge, breeze at his back, leaf-clusters rustling and chattering in his wake.  
  
The castle’s ringed around with bay trees and blueberry bushes, because his nightmare’s not even trying for subtle; the air’s thick and slow as molasses. He takes a step over dead leaves as he crosses from dirt path to bridge-wood; they crunch. The closest tree opens knotholes and develops a mouth: “He needs you.”  
  
“I know he does,” Sebastian says, “I know, I’m trying.” He knows. He’s not a knight in shining armor, but he’s the person Chris has inexplicably chosen to love. He loves Chris Evans with every unworthy clumsy piece of his heart, and he’ll throw himself in front of dragons if that’ll earn Chris one more day.  
  
“Well,” the tree mutters, “hurry up,” and seals bark shut, disinclined to say anything else. Sebastian sighs and crosses the moat, boots and makeshift cane kicking up whirlwinds of dried leaves in eddies of brown and gold. The spot on his wrist burns with ice. He tugs a sweater-sleeve over it.  
  
The castle’s not large, and if it’s a fairy-story, his prince’ll be in the highest tower. He picks his way up winding stone. Arrow-slits sprout bemused violet feathers as he passes; he doesn’t need the reminder of Scott’s warning. He’s cold.  
  
His foot slips—uneven medieval flagstones—and he falls halfway up. His ankle’s given up, or nearly so; weight on it brings tears to his eyes, makes him hiss in pain. He stares at the stairs, sitting with his back against the curving tower wall. “You’re my dream,” he says. “And you’re helping, I think. So please. One more time.”  
  
The castle doesn’t reply. He closes both eyes and leans his head back against stone, gathering strength.  
  
When he opens his eyes he’s at the top of the stairs. His walking stick’s gone, though his scarf’s still wrapped around his leg. He rests a hand on weary fabric; he touches dry smooth flagstones. One more time, he thinks. Thank you.  
  
The door opens ahead. He struggles up, limps forward.  
  
The nightmare’s there before him.  
  
It doesn’t come for him. Not this time. That’s different; this is different. Chris is here. The dream’s changed. Because he’s changed. With his husband at his side.  
  
The nightmare stands in the circular tower room beside the canopied bed, beside great draperies of gold and blue. It stands beside Chris Evans, who’s lying asleep amid pillows, and it ignores Sebastian in place of running a claw along Chris’s limp arm.  
  
Chris doesn’t move. Chris doesn’t awaken. Chris’s face is pale. Enchanted.   
  
Chris isn’t a damsel in distress, Sebastian thinks. Wrong, all wrong. Chris is a warrior. Able to take a blow to the heart and heal.  
  
Even warriors can be hurt, he knows.  
  
He feels something in his hair. A purple feather. Chris needs him.  
  
The nightmare, dressed in pure black, strokes Chris’s arm. Croons a lullaby. In Romanian.  
  
Sebastian feels the rage and love snap loose, then. He takes a step into the room, forgetting the spike of hurt that’s his leg, forgetting everything except the whiteness of Chris’s sleeping face.  
  
“No,” he says. “No, I love him, you can’t have him—” The words become gems as they tumble from his lips: an opal, a diamond, a blood-red ruby.  
  
The nightmare pets Chris and says, casually, “He dreams about that other boy, the one who died,” and one claw stretches inhumanly and idly across the room, stretches to sink into Sebastian’s heart.  
  
“I know,” he says around the wound. “That’s—that’s what people do. When they’ve lost—when he’s lost someone.”  
  
“Someone he loves. Someone brave and fearless and already his best friend. He had to punish you, today.”  
  
“I know,” Sebastian tries to say again, but the claw’s making this difficult. It rakes upward to his throat; he does not bleed, though a ragged gaping wound opens across his larynx. He can touch it when he puts fingertips there. “I’ve known already.”  
  
“You need him. He does not need you.”   
  
“He loves me.”  
  
“Do you recall,” the nightmare muses languidly, “what you thought on the morning of your wedding? Too much everything. Legs, smile, hair. Lack of training. Enthusiasm over silly science-fiction stories. You are not the person he wanted first.”  
  
“He wants me now.”  
  
“He is disappointed in you, by you, with you.”   
  
“Please,” Sebastian whispers. He can’t lie in this place; he’s not sure either of them can. He can’t say that one’s not true. “Please don’t.” Chris turns his head toward the onyx glitter, in his sleep.  
  
“You lied to everyone for so long.” The monster’s not judgmental. No need. It’s correct. “You paid the fine for your lie, legally—” This is also true. He’d had to, once the scandal’d broken; he’d had the money. That hadn’t been the worst of the consequences. “—but you still lied. You told the world you weren’t what you are. And so we will still take you away.”  
                                                    
“I’m married now—”  
  
“If he leaves you,” it reminds him kindly, “you have no protection. If he leaves you or if he dies. Then we will come for you.” And shadows flare up around the room, twisting, writhing, pulsing in sick colors like the black stars of a dizzying blow to the head—  
  
“He won’t leave me—”  
  
“Are you certain? Deep down, in the places that hurt, are you certain?” It smiles with no face. Avuncular. Knowing. “Can you say that you’ve never doubted him? Can you say that you’ve _never_ thought he might walk away from you? Not once?”  
  
“Please stop.” He’s crying. Tears plummet and shatter; when he raises his cupped hands, the drops become milky iridescent pearls. Not knowing what else to do, he catches them.  
  
“Let us say you’re even right.” It does not believe he is. Sebastian can’t breathe. Drowning in pearls. On his knees at the foot of Chris’s bed. He can’t think. He needs to save Chris—if he knew how—if he could ever be good enough _to_ save Chris—  
  
“In that case, however…what if he dies? People die.” The black body flows and reforms, liquid, shapeless, official insignia sparking silver on a shoulder. “We could pronounce him deceased. An accident while crossing the street, a distracted driver, a sudden sickness—”  
  
“No.” Sebastian lowers both hands. Pearls spill to the floor and crash. He pushes himself to his feet. Face to nonexistent face. “No. You can’t. Not him.”  
  
“Anyone. Anytime. _He_ knows.”  
  
“Not him. Me. Please. If it’s anyone.” He still can’t breathe, but he can try this. What it’s always wanted. He can try. “Please, you’re right, you’re right, you’ve always been right, I’m scared and I lied and I ran from you once and I’ve been running since. I’m done. I’m here and I love him and he’s lost enough, so please, _please_.”  
  
“Oh, sweet boy.” The nightmare’s man-shaped again now, in uniform, regarding him and the broken pearls at his feet with patronizing indifference. “What makes you think I can’t have you both? You’re already mine, and you can’t save him. Nothing you can do will change what’s true.”  
  
“No!” Sebastian shouts. The entire tower shakes with the force of it. “No—Chris, I love you, I’m here, _that’s_ true, please—” And he grabs Chris’s hand. Out from under gleaming obsidian claws.  
  
And the roof of the tower caves in. The floor drops out from beneath them. Thunder crashes.  
  
And they fall.  
  
And he screams because they’re falling and he hasn’t saved Chris, because he’s clutching Chris’s hand and Chris hasn’t woken up, because he doesn’t know where the claws’ve gone, because fuck it, he _hates_ heights and flying and falling—

 

_Chris_  
  
Chris wakes up because someone’s crying. The noise trickles into his drowsy consciousness like raindrops, like murmurs. He’s content and cozy, lying in bed with his husband’s weight nestled at his side, but gradually he’s neither anymore, distracted.  
  
Sebastian. Sebastian’s crying. Sebastian, cradled in his arms and tucked up like a not-really-very-little spoon under blankets, is crying.  
  
His heart splinters inside his chest. Oh no. No.  
  
No. God.  
  
Sebastian’s asleep. He comprehends this as he frantically leans closer. Tightly shut eyes. Tension in muscles. Whimpering. Words that sound like Chris’s name and _no_ and _please_ , the last two coming out in multiple languages. Chris has learned a few scattered ways to say please in those languages. The ones his husband knows.  
  
Sebastian sounds so _scared_.  
  
“Seb,” Chris breathes helplessly, hands hovering over him. Useless.  
  
He could wake his husband up. He could do that. Might not be a good idea. Might require roughness, shaking from the grip of nightmares, and if Sebastian’s scared already—  
  
If Sebastian’s scared of _Chris_ already—  
  
Of course that’s what it is. Knowledge thumps like lead into his gut. He hurt Sebastian earlier. He punished Sebastian, and, yeah, they agreed on the need for that, rationally they agreed, but—  
  
Hurt and fear and doubt aren’t rational. And terror’s clawing at his own heart. Terror and guilt: he’s wounded Sebastian badly enough for nightmares. Sebastian who’d never wanted to be anyone’s contracted submissive. Sebastian who knelt naked and faced the wall and trusted Chris to chastise him.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m so sorry. Seb, please—”  
  
Sebastian doesn’t hear him. Sebastian’s crying in his sleep, fingers curled in so tight they must be slicing nails into palms—  
  
Sebastian’s crying, and then Sebastian’s crying out, a real horrified almost-scream that’s got Chris’s name inside it, and then Sebastian’s jerking upright and throwing himself back against the padded headboard with a thud that makes Chris wince, and his eyes’re huge as they fly to Chris’s face—  
  
Sebastian gasps something in Romanian. Voice cracking.  
  
Chris holds out arms, not hoping, trying. Futile, he’s sure.  
  
Sebastian flings himself into Chris’s arms, eyelashes wet, holding on as if he’s afraid that Chris’ll vanish like the last remnants of sun at the death of the day.  
  
Chris doesn’t know what to do. He settles for rubbing Sebastian’s back gently, murmuring low words, saying the I love you, saying _I’m here, I’m here, you’re safe,_ over and over. Bewildered anguish gnaws like wolf’s-teeth at his heart, worrying flesh like a bone. Sebastian’s scared of him—but Sebastian’s somehow finding comfort in his presence. Sebastian was sobbing his name and the word no—but Sebastian’s hands clutch at him as if Chris is the raft keeping them both from drowning. He keeps talking because that seems to help, because maybe those dreadful ragged breaths’re coming more evenly, because a hint of tension might be sagging toward release with the anchor of touch and voice.  
  
Sebastian’s sobs gradually taper off into shuddering breaths but he doesn’t move. He’s trembling.  
  
Nightmares, Chris thinks. A stray memory arrives: Sebastian did mention dreams. Once. Once before.  
  
He can’t recall any detail; he doesn’t think Sebastian gave any, but he’s not a hundred percent confident. He hates this fact; he hates his inadequate brain for not holding on to every drop of priceless language from that beloved mouth.  
  
He strokes hair out of his submissive’s face as tenderly as he can. Too clumsy, but Sebastian lets out a small broken sob and tries to get even closer to him. Chris would open up his entire self and let his husband crawl inside if that’d help. Sebastian’s everywhere anyway.  
  
If Sebastian’s already had nightmares, even before now, then maybe—but no, he corrects that thought. Still his fault. Still now, tonight, when so many previous nights’ve been completely fine. No escaping that one.  
  
The claws of guilt rake across his heart again. His chest. Physical. He can’t breathe.  
  
He needs to breathe. To be strong. To hold Sebastian.  
  
Who produces a word like a jewel, like a moonstone in the night: “Chris?”  
  
“Right here.”  
  
“You are…here…are you all right?”  
  
“Me?” Greatly daring, he strokes the hand over dark hair again. It whispers forlornly through his fingers. “I’m just worried about you. Hey…” He touches the nearest cheek, feels dampness drying under his fingertip. “You don’t have to—to look at me, or say anything, if you don’t want to, okay? But, um, if you feel like talking…”  
  
“I can’t…” Sebastian’s voice fractures. Falters. Fails. A shattered violin, a composer’s pen snapped in two and leaking ink like blood. “Not yet. Not yet, please, _te rog,_ it can’t be real, if I talk about it it’s real and I can’t…”  
  
“Shh,” Chris says desperately, cradling him closer. “Shh, no, it’s a nightmare, it’s _not_ real, whatever—whatever happened, I’m here, I’ve got you, you don’t have to talk about it.” He shoves tears back viciously. Real. _This_ is real. He’s made the man he loves feel scared.  
  
He holds his submissive for another terrible tear-drenched while. The sky’s lightening beyond the closed shutters of their bedroom windows. Dawn heading their way. Sunrise might be illuminating or unkind; he doesn’t know.  
  
He breathes, not sure Sebastian’s still awake, not sure he’s meaning to be heard, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Sebastian is awake. “Chris?”  
  
“Um. Sorry. Go back to—if you can’t sleep just rest. Please.”  
  
“You said you were sorry.” Sebastian lifts his head. His eyes’re red—water-blue irises stand out shockingly against painful color—but mostly dry. “But…it’s not your fault. It’s not you.”  
  
“It’s not?”  
  
“No, I…” A lip-bite, hard; a lowered gaze. “Don’t think that. It’s not you. Or it is but not the way you think. I can’t—it’s too much to lose if—I’m sorry, I don’t have words…”  
  
“Sounds like me every day.” Chris leans in agonizingly slow, giving him every chance to pull back. He doesn’t, so Chris kisses him, gentle as he knows how to be, a feather of a kiss, no demands or commands, just his heart.  
  
This earns a smile. Wobbly but hopeful. “I like that.”  
  
“I can make you hot chocolate,” Chris offers, drunk on that smile and relief he can’t believe in quite yet. “Mom used to do that for us. Or any of our friends. Anyone who needed help. Anyone really, Mom just likes taking care of people, she’s better at making, um, everything, but I think I can handle hot chocolate. Um. Unless you want tea.” Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. “I can maybe handle tea?”  
  
Sebastian’s smile grows a fraction.   
  
“…you want tea?”  
  
“You can make us hot chocolate. Like your mother used to.” Sebastian holds his hand as he hops to his feet. And then swings legs out of bed, obviously planning to accompany him.  
  
Chris instantly sits back down, arm around him. “You don’t have to get up. I’ll come right back.”  
  
Sebastian’s face goes white. “Don’t—don’t leave me—”  
  
“Oh, no, fuck, shh, no, I won’t, I swear.” What the fuck, Chris thinks, half-angry now: not at Sebastian for the clinging, never at Sebastian for needing comfort, but at the fact that something’s hurt and frightened his submissive. Something’s hurt his submissive so damn badly, and he can’t figure out how to do the right thing—  
  
He guides Sebastian’s head to rest against his chest; he pulls Sebastian into his lap. His husband’s crying again, small single individual sobs that burn through Chris’s gut. “Please,” Sebastian begs. “Please let me stay with you.”  
  
“Of course.” He kisses the top of that head; he tightens his grip and tries to be a shield-wall, impenetrable. Nothing’s going to move his arms from their spot. Nothing’s going to move his heart. “Of course. I love you.”  
  
“ _Te iubesc,”_ Sebastian breathes. “I love you, I love you.”  
  
“I know you do.” He’s running through old orientation classes and training about crashes and sub-drop, and swearing at himself. This isn’t exactly that—or he doesn’t think so—but that’s got to be a part, given earlier activities, and some of those techniques might help. Authority, he thinks. Reestablishing solid ground. Sebastian needs to know that Chris won’t leave him, that he’s safe, that he’s wanted. “Okay. Can you stand up?”  
  
Sebastian nods. Too many times, too quickly. It breaks Chris in two.  
  
“Sebastian,” he says. “Don’t say yes if you can’t.”  
  
“I can.” Sebastian’s chin trembles, firms. “May I—I think I can if I can touch you.”  
  
“That was gonna be part of it anyway.” He hugs his submissive one more time, fighting back against the tragedy in those eyes. “My orders. For you.”  
  
“Yes, please.” Hope’s fighting the tragedy too. “That—please, Chris. I need you to.”  
  
“And I will. So…” Sebastian’s been sleeping in a version of his collar—he doesn’t every night, but they’d both wanted that after the day’s emotions—but it’s a gentle one, a barely-present cord of buttery leather that’s more a necklace than anything else. Chris opens a drawer with his toes, waves at a box. “Sit still for a second.”  
  
He puts the box on the bed. Sebastian looks at it, looks into it.   
  
This collar’s the first one, the one from their wedding-morning, lined with blue; they both like the thought. It beckons them with memory.  
  
But that’s not what Sebastian’s looking at. Not what Chris is looking at.  
  
There’s one more item that’s never left the box. It’d been a set.   
  
Tranquil night spills lazily over those contents. Over the single silver ring at the front of the collar; over the matching clip of the leash.  
  
Sebastian breathes out slowly. Looks up at Chris.  
  
Chris, standing petrified by the bed, wanting and hoping and scared as hell, fumbles for words. “You—um, we could—if you need—we don’t have to, but if you—if you wanted to try—or not, that’s fine too, anything’s fine, whatever you want—”  
  
Sebastian picks up the leash. Turns it, toys with it, examining supple black leather. Dawn’s on the way, a misty grey sort of morning that drenches the air in watery pensive opalescence. Sebastian’s fingers are long and elegant and thoughtful, running over onyx and metal. Then he nods.  
  
“You gotta say it,” Chris says, desperate, “out loud, please, I need to hear it. Yes or no.”  
  
The huff of air’s almost a laugh. “Yes. We can—I think I’d like to. Try.”  
  
“Yeah?” He reaches out, trails a fingertip over Sebastian’s cheek, gets a smile. “Yeah.” Sebastian’s sure. So, okay: they’re sure.  
  
He keeps his submissive sitting on the bed, but nudges his knees apart; Sebastian spreads legs gladly and lets Chris step between them. They’re both naked because they’ve slept naked; his cock, having no sense of appropriate timing, gets interested. Sebastian’s mouth’s so close; Sebastian’s body’s so sweet and strong and obedient, his to command and collar, legs spread with Chris between them, wide blue eyes gazing up…  
  
Sebastian’s been crying. Scared. Because of him. Even if not directly his fault, there’s a reason this is happening now.  
  
His arousal lessens.  
  
Sebastian’s half-hard too, he notices; maybe for similar complicated reasons, maybe not, but when he brushes a thumb over plush lips Sebastian kisses it.  
  
Chris takes the lighter softer collar off him first—registers the faint shiver, as if his submissive doesn’t like the removal—and replaces it with the heavier version. This one’s not terribly intense either, no demands about posture or restricted breathing, but it’s definitely more weight, and it’s the first one he’d picked out, the first one his husband ever put on.  
  
Sebastian’s breathing catches, then resumes. His lips are very slightly parted; he tips his head without speaking to let Chris fix the buckle properly.  
  
“How’s that? Too tight?”  
  
“No. You could…you could even make it tighter.” A flush stains those sharp cheekbones: Sebastian admitting to desire. “I want—I like feeling it. I thought, yesterday, about—no, not now.”  
  
“About what?” He hooks a finger through the ring at the front, tugs. Sebastian makes a soft and probably involuntary sound, a quiver of want that plunges along Chris’s spine. “Tell me.”  
  
“Your hands.” Sebastian licks lips. “On—on my throat. Or covering my mouth. So I can’t—so I couldn’t breathe, unless you wanted me to, sir…giving you that, not being in control at all, even my next breath…all yours…”  
  
Chris can’t breathe either. Dizzy with colliding emotions. Desire slams into his body and mind like a thunderclap; yes, he thinks, hell yes, Sebastian being wholly his—but that’s a fucking _advanced_ form of play, he could hurt his submissive so badly, he’s never done this before—Sebastian might’ve done this before, Sebastian who once upon a time went to illicit underground clubs to drown secret cravings in overwhelming physical sensation—  
  
He scrapes out, “You would…want that? You’d trust me?”  
  
“With everything I am,” Sebastian whispers. “I would—I want to give you that. I _want_ to.”  
  
Looking at him, Chris wants that too. Chris allows himself to want that too. “Not…um, not now, okay? Not…” He waves a hand hopelessly: today, nightmares, too many emotions. “We’re already trying one new thing, y’know? But. Yeah. Yes. Soon.”  
  
“Yes…” Sebastian laughs softly, wryly; glances down. “You’re too good to me…”  
  
“Like _hell_ ,” Chris retorts indignantly, and shoves down thoughts about nightmares, and goes on to inform his husband that he’s the best goddamn thing in Chris’s life, he makes the sun come up and stars get brighter and blueberry pie taste better, and so there is no such concept as being too good to Sebastian, no.  
  
When he finishes, night-worn blue eyes’re shining. Still a bit red and weary, but they believe the words. And Sebastian picks up the leash and holds it out to him.  
  
Chris swallows. Takes slim flexible black leather. Takes the clip and, before he can think too much, snaps it onto that collar.  
  
Sebastian actually gasps out loud, or maybe they both do. One tiny click, plus reverberations throughout their bones. Throughout the universe, which shimmers and realigns: into a place where Sebastian Stan will wear a collar and leash for Chris Evans.  
  
“I love you,” Chris says. The words are there. They come out as if they’ve been waiting, part of this moment, destiny. “I want you. You belong to me because I want you. My submissive, my husband. I want you on your knees at my feet and in my arms in bed and smiling when I make coffee for you in the morning. I _will not leave you_. You’re mine, Sebastian, and I will _always_ take care of you.”  
  
Sebastian breathes in, breathes out. His eyes are huge and tremulous, brilliant with so many emotions Chris can’t begin to untangle. He runs his tongue over his lower lip, starts to answer, nods instead.  
  
“Always,” Chris says. “Forever.”  
  
Sebastian whispers, “Can you promise that?” They both know _forever_ ’s technically not possible, but fuck possible, Chris thinks. He whispers back, “I am.”  
  
“Then I believe you,” Sebastian says simply. “Sir.” Sitting on the bed, with his leash in Chris’s hand, his eyes say this is real.  
  
“I won’t ask you again,” Chris says, “if you don’t want to talk about it. What happened tonight. Your, um, what you were dreaming. About. But I do want to take care of you the best way I can, so if there’s anything you need, anything I can do—I want you to tell me at least that much. Please.”  
  
This heartfelt declaration prompts the almost-laugh again. “I want to tell you. About the—the dreams. I only…I need to not think about it for a while first. But I’ll talk to you. I was planning to already. And this is what I need, sir. You. Being yours.”  
  
“Mine.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Can I make you hot chocolate now?”  
  
“ _Da_.” Sebastian starts to move, pauses. His expression’s entertained, amused, curious. “With this…do you want me to walk, or do you want me on hands and knees?”  
  
“Oh fuck,” Chris says weakly. “I…don’t even…I hadn’t thought about—what do _you_ want?”  
  
“I want to let _you_ make the decisions!” And then Sebastian’s laughing. Naked, collared and leashed, sitting on the side of the bed with Chris standing over him: mildly hysterical, emotions raw and right on the surface, but amused, and freely showing it. The grey-sky morning twinkles. Not dull. Magical as pearls and fog. Chilly air like being alive. Clear and present and tangibly crisp: not a dream. “Oh, no…I’m sorry, sir…I’m very tired, I’m sorry, this is wonderful, I can barely think because my head’s full of your leash and your hands…”  
  
Chris gives said leash a jerk. Sebastian inhales abruptly, stops talking, groans. His cock’s rock-hard and upright, flush against his bare stomach. His thighs tense.  
  
“Okay,” Chris tells him. “Hands and knees. Down.”  
  
Sebastian slides off the bed. His legs shake; might not’ve held him anyway, if he’d been required to walk. He whines softly, landing.  
  
“Good,” Chris says. “Good boy.” And his submissive fucking _whimpers_ , arching his back, lifting hips; his body’s begging to be claimed, pleading in every line.  
  
Chris doesn’t fuck him—he wants to, but that’s not what this is about, not precisely, not yet; it’s about Sebastian belonging to him, and sex is part of that but so’re other elements—but does reach down to pet him, unhurried caresses. “Such a sweet little kitten, aren’t you? You like this, being mine, wearing my leash, doing everything I ask…maybe I should get a tag, put it on that collar. Property of Chris Evans.”  
  
Sebastian whimpers again, leaning into Chris’s leg. His head droops; he’s relaxing, sinking into that heady languorous state where nothing matters but his Dominant’s voice and touch. Chris wraps the end of the leash around his hand, takes a step, pulls. “Come on. You’re doing so good, kitten, come on, follow me.”  
  
Sebastian does. Gracefully, in an awkward half-grown panther way, movement that shouldn’t be elegant but is, like driftwood or brittle autumn branches. The leash is relatively short because most of the length’s coiled around Chris’s hand; this keeps him at Chris’s side. Dark leather gleams against pale golden skin: decoration, accessories, symbols of dominance and submission.   
  
When Chris takes another step, the leather stretches taut—and then Sebastian follows, on hands and knees, naked but for collar and leash. Arousal evident in his fully erect cock, hanging prettily visible between his legs. Being good. Being his.  
  
Chris worries for a moment that this’ll be too weird—he’s fucking leading his husband around their home like a pet, and also can Sebastian handle stairs like this?—but when he stops and crouches down and lifts Seb’s chin, he sees peacefulness, plus a kind of dreamy bliss he recognizes from other good scenes. The peace spreads into his own heart, and settles down.  
  
He says, “You can always stop me if you need to, you know your colors, baby,” and touches Sebastian’s face, the corner of those pliant lips; Sebastian nuzzles at his hand, sweet and easy and unashamed. Chris lets his palm rest over that mouth for a second, not hard, thinking about what Sebastian’s admitted to wanting; and then gets back up.  
  
He leads Sebastian down the stairs and into the kitchen. The apartment’s made of muted colors in this silvery pre-dawn city light: a world constructed out of hushed shadows, grey silk, stone and wood and soft cushions and aged book-spines on their shelf. It’s a time of low voices, of susurrations and secrets and confidences shared.  
  
Sebastian stays at his side. Surprisingly quiet, but visibly perceptibly happy, radiating a sort of calm arousal, as if he’s exactly where he belongs and delighted about it; and after a while the leash and collar thing feels almost normal. When Chris walks over to the fridge and the leash pulls tighter, Sebastian moves with him; when Chris stops in front of the counter, Sebastian settles onto knees and leans into his leg, and Chris strokes his hair. Casual. Unremarked. Easy.   
  
He heats up milk and finds lavishly dark rich cocoa mix—powdered, but the expensive kind, a gourmet box he’d bought because his husband deserves to be petted and spoiled. His mom or Sebastian would’ve made hot chocolate from scratch over the stove, but Chris is very naked, mildly concerned that he might somehow set the stove on fire, and extremely distracted by the beautiful brave submissive kneeling at his side. Microwave it is.  
  
He collects both mugs when he’s done, and leads Sebastian out to the living room. He flips on the tv, puts on some Star Trek episodes, grabs a blanket or two. Blue eyes watch him, euphoric, not speaking. He tugs at the leash, watches the tug as it reaches the collar, watches those eyes react. “Come here.”  
  
Sebastian curls readily into his lap on the couch. Chris holds him, kisses him, wriggles so that they can both feel his erection. “I want you. I really, really do. But only if you’re feeling up to it, sub.”  
  
“Yours,” Sebastian says hazily. “Please.”  
  
“Okay.” He picks up one mug of hot chocolate again. “But this is about you, about me taking care of you, so we’re doing this real slow and I’m going to warm you up and keep you safe and make you feel good.” Cocoa and leashes and familiar science-fiction television and his own arms. They can battle nightmares. “I want you to drink this.”  
  
Sebastian drinks obediently. Chris holds the mug for him, giving him carefully measured sips. He doesn’t glance at the corner, the spot where his submissive’d knelt for punishment. Sebastian told him this wasn’t about that, wasn’t because of what he’d demanded. He believes that. Sebastian promised to tell him about it. After some distance, after some comfort. He can do that. He can help.  
  
After a while he sets the mug down and takes one of Sebastian’s unresisting hands and guides it to his own cock. Sebastian’s eyes brighten despite the gilded haze of subspace, and he begins stroking Chris’s shaft immediately, almost innocent in the promptness, the pleasure of command making him uncoordinated and eager to do well.   
  
Chris tells him he is. Tells him he’s such a good boy, so good, belonging to Chris and behaving so well, so pretty on his leash…  
  
Sebastian moans faintly, and squirms in his lap, deliciously abandoned.  
  
At which point Chris starts fondling his husband’s cock, purposefully not establishing any rhythm, keeping him lost in unpredictable sensation. His other hand’s continued playing with the leash: pulling on it, loosening it, taking the end and brushing it over his submissive’s lovely pert nipples. There’s a lot of length in this leash; he has an idea.  
  
He takes some of the leather. Teases Sebastian’s wet cockhead, the slick slit, with it, stroking.  
  
Sebastian gasps. His hand tightens around Chris’s shaft; he hides his face in Chris’s chest but rocks his hips, making sounds that aren’t words.  
  
“You know what that is?” Chris loops black leather around stiff heated flesh, liking the look. “That’s your leash, sub. Your leash rubbing your cock. And you love it, don’t you? You’re getting off on this, getting so wet for me, knowing you’re mine and you belong to me and I could lead you around our house like this if I wanted to…”  
  
Sebastian actually cries out, body arching, cock dripping; he’s clearly about to come, and Chris grips his base and squeezes _hard_ , enough to halt the rising climax. Sebastian collapses against him, sobbing, not calling red or yellow or anything that’d mean stop.  
  
He could take Sebastian outside like this. Well—not exactly like this. Nobody else gets to see _this_. He doesn’t even want anyone seeing his husband naked. But leashes, yes—it’s absolutely acceptable, even expected in some circles. He could keep Sebastian on a leash at a party. Walking down the street. Doing an interview. Remembering this moment, feeling this way.  
  
Only if Sebastian ever wants that, of course. Chris’s submissive’s famously never worn even a collar for anyone else. Even that remains an occasionally difficult adjustment, and Chris’ll never ask for anything Sebastian won’t eagerly give.   
  
But the thought, the idea of it, gives him a thrill nonetheless. Same kind of thrill he gets when thinking: Sebastian never _has_ worn anyone else’s collar. Only his.  
  
He kisses the top of that bent head. Nudges his submissive’s lax hand, an order; Sebastian dazedly gets back to stroking him, being obedient, serving his Dominant. Chris murmurs, “Still good?” into his hair, and Sebastian moans, “Yes, yes, please…Chris, please…” and lets his head fall against Chris’s shoulder.  
  
Chris says, “I want you to come when I tell you to,” and Sebastian sobs the yes in other languages, forgetting English, and writhes in his lap. Chris’s cock, caught between their bodies and encircled by Sebastian’s hand, aches; he needs release too, needs to spill himself all over that willing body and mark his pretty sub with his come, but this isn’t about him.  
  
He rubs Sebastian’s cock, with the leash wrapped around it. He puts his other hand on Sebastian’s throat, over the collar. Sebastian’s eyelashes flutter; he’s adrift in rapture, claimed and possessed and belonging. His cock’s leaking copiously; the leash is getting slick with it too. Chris considers this, takes the leather, touches it to his submissive’s parted lips. “That’s you, sub. You can taste how much you want this. Getting all wet and messy over this, just the way I want you, so good for me.”  
  
Sebastian’s whole body shudders, one long rolling wave of bliss.  
  
Chris pushes the end of the leash into his mouth, leather and fingers; Chris’s other hand works Sebastian’s cock, faster and rougher now, and Sebastian’s moaning around the obstruction, trying to lick and suck at everything in his mouth, trying to be good and not come until permitted, sobbing with frustrated need as Chris’s hand finds the exact roughness and rhythm he wants—  
  
“Come for me,” Chris orders, and Sebastian does, body shaking with it, helpless jerks and pulses of pleasure that splash creamy white across his stomach and chest, held in Chris’s lap.  
  
He’s a heavy weight in the aftermath, shivering with ebbing tides, cuddling close. Chris’s heart glows; Chris’s body glows too, tender and fond and suffused by want. It’s less urgent and more radiant, this new want: he’s going to come, of course, he’s aware that he’s on the brink, watching Sebastian. But he also wants to cry and to laugh and to protect the man he loves, forever and always.  
  
“I promise I’ll take care of you,” he whispers as his heart throbs with love, and Sebastian makes a soft yearning sound and nestles trustingly against him, and Chris comes that way: his submissive’s hand loosely cupping his cock, his own hand over musician’s fingers to hold them in place, climax spurting out hot and sticky between them.  
  
He cleans them up, after a few minutes of glorious recovery. Sebastian’s practically asleep in place, drowsy and sated and well-loved, but wakes up for a few sips of now-cool chocolate from the other mug, and some water, rehydrating. Chris pets his hair until he drifts off again, and then unclips the leash, wonders how to clean it, sighs, drops it atop one of Sebastian’s floor-pads for kneeling. Those’re designed to be cleanable. And maybe his husband’ll have ideas about the leash. Or they can just buy another one. Or a few.  
  
He leaves Sebastian’s collar on. He nuzzles Seb’s face with his until pale eyes blink and wake up a little more, a second time. “Hey,” Chris coaxes. “You doin’ okay? Just checking in.”  
  
“I’m…” Sebastian stops, blinks again, yawns, looks surprised. “I feel…lighter. Tired. But…I’m yours. That’s like…being held up. Floating. I don’t know. Congratulations, sir, you’ve decimated my words.”  
  
“That’s a good thing, right?”  
  
“Oh yes.” The smile curves upward, tilting joy in the line of that beautiful mouth. “Yes, Chris.”  
  
“Feeling better?”  
  
“All this was to make me feel better?”  
  
“Well…yeah? And sort of no? I mean—oh fuck, what _do_ I even mean—I mean, yeah, it was. But also because I want you. I kinda like having sex with you, y’know, sub.”  
  
Sebastian’s lips twitch like they want to laugh. “Yes, sir. I quite like having sex with you as well. Is that…did you put Star Trek on? Did Captain Picard _watch_ us having sex?”  
  
“You like Star Trek,” Chris says. Sebastian will know what he means. Sebastian sees him, gets him, knows him, in a way he’d once stopped believing he’d find. Sebastian’s found him.  
  
“I do like Star Trek. And I like you holding me.”  
  
“I like that too.” He stretches them both out across the couch. Drapes blankets and himself around his husband. A new episode starts, starship flying through glittering galaxies. Exploration and hope about the future. A show Sebastian loves. A morning. “Go ahead and rest. It’s still early anyway, you wouldn’t even be up yet, get some sleep.” And then he wants to kick himself. Can Sebastian sleep? Have they fought back the monsters enough?   
  
Sebastian yawns again. “You may have a point. Stay here and hold me; you’re warm and I like it.”  
  
“Always,” Chris vows, hugging him more tightly, being a strong protective Dominant big spoon. “Always.” And he does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after, and conversations.

_Sebastian_  
  
He wakes with a sort of gradual abruptness: immediately aware that he is awake, not wanting to move, lazily letting sounds and textures trickle in. He’s comfortable and he feels safe. He’s naked with large familiar muscles cuddling him. He’s under a few blankets, and atop their couch. He needs to brush his teeth; his mouth tastes like hot chocolate and water and…leather, and himself. Hmm.  
  
He can’t remember any dreams at all, this time around. Only feeling protected. Feeling cared for.  
  
He’s tired, but tired in an excellent way, a way he recognizes from other fabulous scenes and the aftereffects, with Chris. He feels like he’s been wrung out and laid bare and taken to the edges of himself; he feels like he’s been opened up and seen into and accepted and cherished. His body’s not sore in the way he’d be after a spanking or a caning or a thorough fucking, but his muscles ache with the pleasant memory of being kept on the verge of climax, poised for ages, and then swept away.  
  
His knees’re a little sore. He has been crawling, he supposes.  
  
He sets that memory aside for a minute. If he examines it he’ll have to decide how he feels about it, the way he got on hands and knees and begged to be led around on his Dominant’s leash. The way Chris had called him a pretty little kitten, a good boy, and Sebastian’s whole body’d flushed hot and trembled with humiliation and excitement—  
  
So much for not thinking about it. He makes a face at himself, and then chooses more or less on a whim to be perfectly fine with those desires. Not that simple, of course, and he’ll have to process later, should talk the scene and reactions through with his Dominant, but for now: fuck it. He’d felt good. Chris had felt good. They’d both consented, and they’d both enjoyed themselves.   
  
He feels good now, splendidly triumphant if worn out.  
  
He opens his eyes.  
  
In the background the television’s gone to a power-saving mode. Sunshine’s trickling in around the edges of closed window-shutters; it’s ventured out from behind mist and pools across espresso floorboards like liquid gold, welcoming them to the day. The clock tells him it’s still morning, but only for another ten minutes or so. Stretched out across the sofa alongside him, Chris Evans is solid and present and sleeping.  
  
Chris normally likes to get up and start whatever needs to be done. Chris is also capable of napping anywhere, in any amount of time. And didn’t get much sleep the night before.  
  
Without moving, he gazes at the cocoa cups on the table. He feels the weight of his collar encircling his throat.  
  
Chris’s arms’ve stayed around him. They keep him warm. They hold him close.  
  
He hasn’t stirred, but Chris awakens regardless, in a rush of flailing limbs and instinctive clutching at him. “What—Seb—Sebastian—”  
  
“I’m here. So are you.” Which is nice; and the adjective surprises him as he thinks it. Not erotic—or mostly not; desire’s never not present around Chris—and not a demand on him and not an empty bed in the wake of fear. Just—domestic, a partnership. Nice.  
  
“I fell asleep—” Chris squeezes eyes shut, swears at himself, distressed. “I didn’t mean to. Shit. Are you okay?”  
  
Sebastian considers this question gravely. “I believe so, yes.”  
  
“Oh, fuck.” Chris looks like he wants to smack himself in the face, and only isn’t because both arms’re occupied. “What do you need? What can I do? I’m so sorry.”  
  
“I think…” He swallows. Meets apprehensive love with his own in midday light. Lets cocoa mugs cheer them on in the background. “I want to tell you about it. The dream. The—nightmare.”  
  
“You do…?”  
  
“I can. Now. Please don’t move.” He puts one hand on his husband’s arm to illustrate the point. “Please.”  
  
“Of course I won’t.” Chris holds on more tightly. “Never, if you want.”  
  
“Oh…not never, we’ll need a shower at some point…but I like this spot.” He takes a breath, lets it go. Sunshine tickles his toes at the corner of the couch.  
  
Secure in Chris’s arms, surrounded by their home, he talks.  
  
He’s told no one but his mother, and that’d been decades earlier. He expects the words to be harder. He starts at the beginning and goes from there. He tells Chris about this one specifically, about what’s different this time. Scott Evans and rose gardens and Chris needing him. Clawed hands and hiding in his childhood bedroom. A fairytale castle and himself leaning on a tree-branch, limping to Chris’s side. The monster, as ever, waiting.   
  
“I tried bargaining,” he explains, not looking up, unable to face Chris’s expression, “this time. I tried begging. I said they could have me. If they left you alone. I’ve never tried that before. I don’t think it worked. But that was when I woke up.”  
  
“You were crying,” Chris whispers. “You said my name.”  
  
“I couldn’t save you.” He stares down at the floor: at distressed knotholes and the grain of wood. “I tried. I said I’d come with them, this time. If you didn’t have to be hurt. I said that I would—I tried.”  
  
When he looks up, Chris is crying too.  
  
Chris Evans cries at Disney movies and at the sheer glory that’s the reckless arc of a rainbow through the sky. Right now Chris Evans is crying for him.  
  
Sebastian bites his lip. Hard. Too wide, his mouth; the nightmare’d said so. Like his legs, too long, and his eyes, too big. The pain stings, grounding.   
  
He says, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“No,” Chris breathes. Tears streak his face, tumble down to land in his beard. He does not swipe them away, only touches Sebastian’s cheek. “No, you—you did save me. You _do_. You don’t know? Every day.”  
  
“I’m not—I lied, I hid from everyone, I was never good enough—”  
  
“I _love_ you.”  
  
“And I love you, of course I do, forever, but—”  
  
“If you hadn’t been you we wouldn’t be here.” Chris does scrub his free hand over his face this time. “One thing. I need to know. Has anyone—did anyone ever threaten you? Hurt you? Tell you they could take you away?”  
  
“Like…deportation?”  
  
“When everyone found out?” Chris watches him with agonizing gentleness, with terrible concern: afraid that the answer’s yes, that Sebastian’s been scared or threatened or intimidated in the past. “Did someone tell you they could send you away? If you—did they make you—do anything?”  
  
“ _What?_ Oh—oh, God. No. No, sir—Chris—no. I swear.” Of the myriad possibilities, that one’s never before occurred to him. He’s distantly shocked that it _could’ve_ happened, blackmail about his status used for his money or sexual favors, but right now he’s got to reassure Chris. “No, nothing like that. No one ever said _anything_ , in fact. I thought it might come up when I paid the fine for being unregistered, but they never said I couldn’t stay.”  
  
It’d been a hefty fine even given his composer’s income. Designed to deter offenders. He’d mostly been horrified at the loss of funds he could’ve sent to his parents for medical bills.   
  
“They put me on the public Registry, of course, but I knew they would have to. And that helped, in one way at least, because…”  
  
“Because it meant you were on record as an American submissive,” Chris fills in, tension easing somewhat. “They wouldn’t deport you after that.”  
  
“Precisely.” He blinks back sudden inexplicable anguish, returning like a dangerous boomerang. “I know it’s ridiculous. A stupid nightmare.”  
  
“It’s not.” One more tear escapes. Glistens over freckles on Chris’s cheek, honest as love. “It’s not. You’re—God, you’re the bravest person I know. You can have dreams like that, and then wake up and tell me you feel safe with me…”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“And you’re hurt,” Chris mourns. “You’re not—not okay, and I can’t fix it, can I…I’m supposed to be able to fix it, I’m your Dominant, I’m your husband, and I can’t…”  
  
“What if…you don’t have to? Fix it.” He leans in. Nose to nose. Equally honest. “If I’m not okay. That’s possible. But we’re not broken.”  
  
“We’re not…”  
  
“No,” Sebastian says. “We’re whatever we decide we are. Together. You said I do save you. I’ll always try. You save me every time you tell me you love me. We’re…saved, then. Safe.”  
  
Chris’s lips part on a breath, on a yes.  
  
“I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks,” Sebastian says to that yes.  
  
“You need—”  
  
“I need this marriage to work. I know. But…” He glances down, gathers courage, glances up at Chris through abruptly—and annoyingly—bashful eyelashes. Not shy, only momentarily knocked off-balance by emotion. “What works is what works for us, isn’t it? That’s the important part. Unless you’re planning to divorce me.”  
  
Chris’s response to that is fervent, dramatic, and just a touch blasphemous, and sealed with a thorough kiss. Sebastian grins. “I love you, Chris.”  
  
“I love you.” Chris’s hands twine into his hair, cup his cheek, cradle his face. “I’ll always want to try to help. If you’ll let me.”  
  
  
_Chris_  
  
His words hang in the air. He holds his breath.  
  
Sebastian smiles.   
  
Chris hears the thump of his own pulse, dizzy. His eyes’re wet. Sebastian’s story echoes in his ears, a gruesome dreadful fairytale full of monsters and castles and injury and fear and being torn away from home. Sebastian lives with this nightmare. Has dreamed it before. And Chris hasn’t known.   
  
Different this time, that enchanted voice’d mused. With you. About you, not just me. I tried bargaining, I tried begging, I tried to save you.  
  
Sebastian says, continuing to smile at him, “That’s why I told you, sir. I know you can help.”  
  
“Anything. Everything. Anything you need.” He has to clear his throat. Heartbreak stuck in there. Fishbones of pain and love. Sebastian is telling him, is believing in him, now. “What you said…you know that’s true…we’re not broken. You’re not. You don’t need fixing. I’ll help however I can, of course I fucking will, but you’re stronger than I am anyway.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says, eyes solemn and dancing, impishness fluttering over sweet sincerity, “I know what I said, Chris, I’m the one who said it.”  
  
“You…” He chokes on a laugh. On a hiccup of tears. “You’re…you’re such a fucking sarcastic brat sometimes…for a submissive, my submissive…God, I love it. I love you. I do want you to tell me, though. Legally, is there anything we need to do? Anything I should know?”  
  
“I think I’ve told you nearly everything already.” Sebastian sits up a bit more, pondering the question and his own history. He’s wrapped in a blanket and his hair’s falling into his eyes; his collar’s a curl of black and sapphire around his throat. He seems content. Even happy.   
  
And he explains the circumstances, the story, the few pieces Chris doesn’t already know; he talks about a lie of omission, twice over, two different countries. Chris nods, making a mental note to call his lawyer just in case. He’s fairly certain no one can deport his husband at this point—if that’d been an issue, it would’ve happened when Sebastian’d been publicly outed—but there might be some loophole he doesn’t know regarding unregistered submissives. Subs are more rare, after all. Useful status symbols. Decorative. Kept in those metaphorical gilded cages younger Sebastian’d been so afraid of. And Sebastian’s famous these days. Sought-after. Prominent.  
  
“I don’t know what more they could do to me now, honestly. I’ve got the paperwork somewhere showing that I paid distressingly large sums of money to be officially pronounced someone’s property, I’m on the Registry, I found a Dominant who wants to keep me, and I’m married to you on top of our binding contract. My husband.”  
  
“Love you,” Chris says, thinking again about his half-serious suggestion of putting a tag on his husband’s collar. “I want a copy of your paperwork. I have our contract and our marriage certificate, but I want the other ones too, what you just said, anything you signed.”  
  
“Ah…” Sebastian somehow manages to make a guilty expression endearing. “Yes, of course, but…that might be difficult at the moment…”  
  
“Don’t tell me you don’t know where it is.”  
  
“No…I…well, it’s here, it’s not gone, it’s in a box somewhere in my office…we moved! I’m still unpacking!”  
  
“Sebastian…”  
  
“Yes, sir. I know. It’s important.” Sebastian sighs. “Sorry, Chris.”  
  
“Not mad at you.” He taps his sub’s adorable nose. “I know your organizational skills. I’ve seen your office. I’ve waded through your office.”  
  
Sebastian tries to bite his finger, because Sebastian really is a kitten in a lot of ways. Chris taps his cheek this time, not a slap but hard enough to register as gently playful scolding. Sebastian gives him innocent I-did-nothing eyes. His submissive’s perfectly capable of being a sassy provocative mischief-maker, Chris is learning, given security and freedom and love.  
  
He likes that. He likes everything about Sebastian. No one’s going to take his husband away, or hurt those beautiful eyes, not while Chris is here.   
  
“Sorry,” Sebastian says, actually meaning it this time. “I can go and look if you’d like. I think I have an idea which box.”  
  
“Not right this minute, but yeah. I can help you look.” And tidy up. “The other part, though…you know you’re incredible, right? You only lied because you were scared, and, fuck, everybody gets scared. I’m scared. I’m scared half the time I talk to you, you’re so fucking brilliant, you totally wouldn’t accidentally set the stove on fire with hot milk, and you make me laugh and you take care of everybody, me, your parents, and you write music that makes people feel all the emotions—okay, stop staring at me, I’m gettin’ nervous—”  
  
“I’m confused about the stove bit.”  
  
“Me too.”  
  
“Chris, stop.” Sebastian reaches out, takes his hands. They’re sitting face to face, tangled in blankets. “I’m all right. I’m…well enough. I’ve had that nightmare for—a long time, on and off. Mostly off. Sometimes months, even a year or two, without it. I know you love me. I know—I think, I hope—that I’m someone worth loving. As you said, everyone gets scared. I might always be, deep down. Or I might not. It’s not rational, that one. But I’m here with you. I’m happier than I ever imagined I could be. The best kind of dream.”  
  
“When I met with your mother,” Chris says, holding on, rubbing thumbs over Sebastian’s hands, knuckles and slim bones and baby-egret clumsiness, “when she was interviewing your potential suitors…I told her about me. About Matt. Sort of. No names or anything. I told her I’d lost someone. She said she wouldn’t let you be anyone’s second choice. I told her you weren’t. You’re not. I wanted you—I fell in love with you because you’re, y’know, _you_. The way I felt when I heard your music, when I saw your interviews, when I snuck into your concert and watched you play—I mean, I don’t know if you can say that’s love, if I hadn’t even talked to you, it was completely love the second I met you though, when you said yes at our wedding and you were so damn brave and I just _knew_ —”  
  
Sebastian’s crying anew, but smiling through the tears. Chris squeezes his hands. “My point was, um, fuck, okay, my point was, the way I felt about you even before we finally met—I knew you were a person I wanted to get to know. And that felt like—hope, I guess. Like something that made my life brighter. Wanting that again. And that’s all you. You were never a second choice. You were my only choice.”  
  
Sebastian tries to talk, fails spectacularly because of the crying, and launches himself into Chris’s arms, his own going around Chris’s neck. They topple backward onto the sofa, entwined.  
  
“I love you,” Chris says, lying on his back with his submissive cradled in his arms, and strokes dark silky hair. He’s tearing up too. Amazed he’s made it this far through his own unpracticed rambling avowal. “I love you so much. I will be here if you get scared. That’s a promise. I’ll be here if you have nightmares, I’ll hire a fucking army of lawyers to keep you with me if anyone even _thinks_ about taking you away, and I’ll do my best to make you happy. Every day.”  
  
“An army of lawyers,” Sebastian says, sniffling a little, laughing into his collarbone, tempest transformed to glowing joy. “A whole army? And—thank you. I love you, I love you, thank you.”  
  
“Nah.” Chris rubs his back. “Thank _you_. Multiple armies. Armed with briefcases and machetes.”  
  
Sebastian laughs again, and leaves his head on Chris’s chest, content.  
  
Behind them sunshine chases clouds across the floor. Sebastian’s leash, filthy and wonderful, lies coiled in a satisfied heap on its cushion. Empty hot chocolate mugs beam encouragement from the table.  
  
“I could try to make breakfast for you,” Chris says, “or I could take you back to bed, or I could put on more Star Trek, or, um, try to draw you like a hero in a fairytale. My hero.”  
  
“Weren’t you having some sort of fire-related argument with our stove?”  
  
“I could get food delivered?” He pokes his husband in the ribs for that. “Also you didn’t answer the rest.”  
  
“I’m not exactly hungry…not yet, at least…”  
  
“You need to eat. One of our rules, remember, sub?”  
  
“Yes, sir, then. Can you order us pizza? And…I don’t really want to move.” Sebastian kisses his chest, above his heart. “I’m still a bit…shaky, I think. Happy, entirely happy, but tired. A little cold. I want to stay curled up with you in soft blankets and watch Captain Picard all afternoon. And yes to you drawing me, but only if you draw yourself into the story also. If I’m your hero you’re mine.”  
  
“It’s New York,” Chris says, “of course I can order fucking pizza, from your favorite place, even.” It’s lunchtime, and even if it wasn’t, he’s thoroughly in favor of pizza for breakfast. One more compatibility that makes him grin.   
  
As far as acquiring said pizza, Sebastian’s favorite place doesn’t in fact deliver, but has been bribable in the past. Chris has a lot of money and a shameless willingness to barter his own sketches—worth a decent amount these days—for his husband’s happiness; Sebastian currently thinks that the place in question has recently begun delivery service, and will never find out otherwise. “And yes to everything else. Holding you, Star Trek, whatever you want.”  
  
“Whatever I want…” Sebastian blushes but finishes, “Please leave my collar on?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“Chris?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I think I like the leash. Not every day, but sometimes. When I especially need to feel it. Being yours.”  
  
“Yeah,” Chris says, kissing him, loving him, sliding a hand to the back of his neck to rest over that collar, “I like that too.”


End file.
